Ray Scott’s Dock

While most of the back bays in South Jersey are seeing anglers struggling to find a keeper flounder, Margate seems to have quite a few of them according to reports this week from Scott’s Dock. Each day, at least one keeper was brought into the shop, including a 22-incher weighing over 4 pounds. Live minnows can’t be beat, but there are plenty of smaller fish being caught on squid and spearing. There was an uptick this week in larger bluefish being caught behind Margate. We don't know if these are leftovers from the spring run or new fish that decided to stop over in the back bays for a meal. Regardless, they are surprisingly large for this time of the year with several in the 5-pound range caught by anglers fishing for flounder.

The back bay water temperatures are starting to even out according to Ray at Scott’s Dock. This has caused the flounder to start biting again, and this week saw a good number of keepers brought back to the dock. There are still plenty of short fish, but the keeper size fish really made a good showing this week and were caught on live minnows or Gulp baits. In addition to the flounder action, there are a lot of croakers being caught near the inlet and even the occasional bluefish.